


Cicatrix

by YouWereSoAfraid (non_canonical)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark Will, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Murder, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-09 02:08:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11094675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/non_canonical/pseuds/YouWereSoAfraid
Summary: Will Graham's going to have a few more scars to add to his collection.  It's hardly surprising, given that he threw them both off a cliff.But some wounds take longer than others to heal, and not all of them are physical.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's note: Why no trigger warnings? Because they'd spoil the surprise. Brace for heavy duty angst -- caveat lector!

Will hits the Atlantic like he’s hitting concrete.  The impact slams the air from his body, and he plunges into freezing darkness.  He falls; he sinks.  Time congeals around him and he hangs, suspended in a moment beyond fear and pain.  Then the current clutches at him, shaking him awake.  The blood pounds in his ears and his heart clenches around every frantic beat.  His lungs clamour for oxygen, and he stifles the fatal impulse to inhale.  He doesn’t know which way is up — is the surface, is air — just kicks out blindly and flails with the arm that’s still working.

Will Graham surfaces into a world of salt spray and flaring agony, and he gasps in one glorious, stinging breath after another.  But he can’t see Hannibal, can’t see him anywhere, and panic hotwires his brain.  He croaks out Hannibal’s name.  He coughs, spits blood, and calls out louder, but the crash of the surf smothers his cry.  He’s lifted by the swell, and his stomach lurches as he’s dragged back down.  Surely Hannibal can’t be far.  Will twists and turns as best he can — and there he is.

Will lunges, pain jolting outwards from his shoulder.  His numb fingers fumble, baffled by Hannibal’s sodden clothing, losing their grip for a moment before he gains a solid anchor.  He flings an arm around Hannibal and starts to swim.  The undertow sucks at him, hungry and insistent, and he feeds it his shoes.  He’s so very, very tired; he wants to close his eyes and stop struggling.  He clutches Hannibal tighter and keeps going.

Will’s hand strikes something solid, something too smooth, too regular to be rock.  He gropes at slick timber, scrabbling for a handhold, and he squirms his way up onto the jetty.  Hannibal’s a dead weight as Will tries to haul him up.  His arm spasms and Hannibal slips from his grasp.  Will drags in a couple of breaths — he’d grit his teeth if he could stop them from chattering — and he strains as hard as he can, ignoring the pain that whites out his vision, wrestling Hannibal from the Atlantic.

Adrenaline surges queasily through him, fuelling one last convulsive effort, and then the two of them are sprawled together on the planks.  But Hannibal isn’t moving.  Will’s not sure if he’s even breathing, and this isn’t right, this can’t be the way it ends.  This won’t be the way it ends: Will won’t allow it.  He closes his eyes for one needed moment, and then he begins.

\---------

Will’s drifting, heavy and sluggish.  He doesn’t know where he is, doesn’t remember how he got there.  He lifts his head, but the whole world tilts and sets the couch beneath him rocking, and he sinks back onto the cushions.  The beating of his heart is a slow, gentle melody that lulls him back to sleep.

Will stirs inside his cocoon of blankets.  There’s a buzzing in his head, the drone of insects or the hum of voices in another room — no not voices: one particular voice.  He tries to focus, but his mind wanders and he gets lost inside the darkness behind his eyelids.

Will wakes into a world of radiance.  Everything is warm and soft and a little fuzzy around the edges.  The room is flooded with a gentle light that softens the uncompromising planes of Hannibal’s face.  Will smiles.

"You don’t seem disappointed that you’re alive," Hannibal says.  "Or that I am."

"I don’t feel disappointed," Will slurs.  "Although that may be the morphine talking."

"Will."  There’s a question — there are several questions — layered in that one word, but Will’s eyes are closing again as the drugs pull him under.

Will floats back up to the sound of distant music, and he’s not sure if it’s playing somewhere nearby or if it’s leaking from one of the rooms inside his head.  He wants to go inside, to follow it to its source, to lose himself in the then rather than face the now, but Hannibal’s voice pursues him, calling him back.

"Rehydration is important following extensive blood loss," Hannibal is saying, and he sounds more awake than is humanly possible, given the circumstances.

Will doesn’t want to move, but Hannibal has a point and Will’s the only one who can walk right now — or for the foreseeable future, although Will shies away from that thought.  There’s only so much he can deal with at the moment, and that mostly consists of making it to the kitchen on legs that threaten to buckle beneath him.  The drugs are wearing off, and Will is starting to feel those ribs — the ribs, the shoulder, his face.

The water helps.  Will finds salad in the refrigerator, and turkey that’s dessicated but doesn’t smell bad.  He knows that he needs to eat, but he doesn’t feel hungry and he has to choke the food down.

"I don’t regret," Will says.

"What don’t you regret?"

"Anything; everything."  Will feels clearer now, and calmer.  Maybe a little too calm.  "It’s not so much an absence of specific regrets, more the inability to feel regret at all."  Will wonders if he’s in shock, or if he’s simply elevated denial to an art form.  

The world is more reality than dream, now, and it’s time to make a decision, but even as that thought hits him he knows his decision is already made.  It was made a long time ago, if he’s honest with himself, but he rarely sees himself with the clarity with which he sees others.

"We need to leave," Will says, and that simple, plural pronoun conveys everything he needs to say.

They really do need to leave, the sooner the better.  They know nothing about the owner of this house, and have no idea how soon a neighbour — or a relative or a friend — is liable to come calling.  All knows is that the woman was frail: frail enough that he was able to overpower her one-handed, frail enough that he barely winces when he drags her body aside to clear a path to the door.  He should have found another way, but perhaps Chiyoh was right after all.  Maybe violence is what he understands best.

"She didn’t deserve this," Will says.

"No, she didn’t," Hannibal agrees, and Will knows that he’s sincere.  He also knows that Hannibal’s only regret is allowing the meat to go to waste.

Will pops the stitches in his shoulder carrying Hannibal into the safe house, and there’s blood everywhere.  The stairs to the second storey might as well be Mount Everest, but he finds a living room with two couches, and he drops Hannibal onto one before collapsing on the other.  He wakes in twilight, with no idea whether he’s slept for an hour or a day.  Fever simmers in the marrow of his bones, but he staggers to his feet and brings them water, and somehow manages to inject the antibiotics without any slips from his shaking fingers.  Will sweats and shivers through restless hours of darkness and a miserable day, but he sleeps through the following night and when he wakes the sunlight doesn’t knife into his brain.

The first meal that Will cooks for them is a sorry affair.  Even without any red meat — too damned chewy — and even with the vegetables boiled to mush, every mouthful is an endurance event and every movement of his jaw burns like acid.  Will gulps his food down, fully prepared to deal with the indigestion later on.  He looks up from his plate to find that Hannibal is smiling: smiling at him.  The corners of Will’s mouth ease upwards in spite of the pain.  A curious sensation ripples through him, a kind of lightness, of calm, and it dawns on him that he’s happy.  It’s true that the FBI is looking for them, and that Will has no idea what Hannibal actually wants — what he wants — or where they go from here.  But right now, Will is going to rest and heal, and take each day as it comes.

Will eases back on the morphine, and the pain isn’t as bad as he feared.  As long as he doesn’t breathe, he’s just fine.  He puts his shoulder through its range of motion, or what passes for it these days.  There’s a weakness in his right arm, a certain numbness in a couple of his fingers: nerve damage, but under the circumstances he got off lightly.  It was Hannibal who bore the brunt of the impact — but Hannibal never complains, and never accuses.  It’s too good to be true, and Will waits for the other shoe to drop.

Will steps into the shower and turns the temperature way up.  He has to be careful of his stitches, but it feels good to let the water stream down his back, soothing cranky muscles, and he stays there longer than he should.  He rummages through the closet.  He still can’t lift his arm above his head, and sweaters are out of the question, so he digs out a shirt and shrugs it on.  The sleeves fall almost to his fingertips and he turns back the cuffs.

"I spent half my childhood wearing hand-me-downs," Will confesses, and he has no idea why he’s saying this.  Whatever Hannibal is to him now, he’s certainly not his therapist.

"Always too large or too small.  You never felt comfortable in those clothes."

"Not just the clothes," Will tells him,  "I wasn’t comfortable inside my skin."

"The caterpillar doesn’t know that it will grow into a butterfly."

Will snorts in amusement.  "If I’m a butterfly, I hope I don’t end up in Jack Crawford’s collection."

He tries to make sure that one of them is always near a window.  He keeps an eye on the long sweep of the driveway, even though he knows he’s being stupid: if Jack has found them he isn’t just going to drive up to their front door.  The possibility of discovery gnaws at Will.  He doesn’t know how he’d get Hannibal out of there, and he can’t imagine leaving him behind.  All the same, he places Hannibal’s bag by the front door: a bug out bag, that’s what the survivalists would call it, but no survivalist ever owned a bag made of hand-stitched Italian leather.

And no survivalist’s bag would contain so many different house keys.  Will has one set in his pocket, but he has no idea what the others might unlock, or even which country they’re in.  It’s possible that the stacks of banknotes are a clue, but Will can’t even identify some of the currencies.  Then there’s the passports, and Will tries not to think about how the one with his photograph has been sitting there for more than three years.  He tries not to think about how Hannibal knew all along — but Hannibal was wrong, if only about the timing, because Will wasn’t ready then.

"It ought to feel strange," Will muses, "protecting you rather than protecting myself from you."

"Does it feel normal to you?"

"Normal?  No.  But no stranger than anything else that’s happened lately."  He seems to be navigating his new existence with the sort of casual unconcern usually found in dreams.  "Maybe I’ll wake up in a hospital bed, intubated, sedated, and find this was all a fantasy."

"Would this be your fantasy?" Hannibal asks.

"The best of all possible worlds?  Not exactly.  I’d prefer it if both of us were a little less damaged."

Will angles his cheek towards the mirror and presses an experimental fingertip to the line of stitches.  It doesn’t exactly hurt, and he supposes that that’s good enough, so he takes the tweezers and hunts for one of the loose threads.  He slides the scissors carefully between the suture and the skin, and snips.  There’s a slight pull, the uneasy sensation of something sliding through his flesh, but it comes away easily enough, so he moves onto the next.  Only after he’s laid down the scissors, and after he’s swabbed the scar with alcohol, does he step back and study the wreck of his face.  The stitches had been functional rather than aesthetic: he’d needed professional medical attention; he’d needed Hannibal’s skills.

"I could never admire anything truly ugly," Hannibal tells him.

Will knows that, knows that Hannibal has always found beauty in the most unlikely of places, but he doesn’t quite feel the truth of it until Hannibal picks up pencil and paper and starts to explore the new geography of Will’s face.

Will strolls through the Norman chapel where the air is thick with incense and the murmur of unanswered prayers.  Hannibal is everywhere, his eyes closed and face tilted into the sunlight, enraptured by the choir, his broken heart bleeding onto a reminder of mortality.  The dark spaces beneath their feet whisper with the memory of forgiveness.  Will lights a candle just so that he can watch Hannibal snuff it out.

They sit side by side in the Uffizi, but Will doesn’t waste his time with the art.  Hannibal’s face has new scars now, but it’s lit by the same, remembered smile, and Will is sure that Hannibal would be there with him even if he had a choice.  Hannibal’s pencil rasps, and when Will looks down he sees fabric and foliage unfurling across the page, as Hannibal pictures Will in pursuit of a fleeing Bedelia.

There’s a room under construction in Will’s palace, a room of exquisite, painful beauty.  Glass crunches underfoot, the floor is slippery with wine and blood, and the air is thick with violence.  Will enters here in triumph, but it’s a tainted victory, and there’s another room that’s a short step away, and a long plunge into the dark.  It’s a fortress in Will’s mind, locked and barred, but the door quivers and rattles as the waves crash against rock.

"We didn’t jump," Hannibal says, "we fell."  Of course Hannibal would want to kick down that particular door.  "We fell, that’s what saved us.  Was that your intention?"

Will wants to protest because it’s way too late, or possibly way too soon, to be talking about this, and he really doesn’t want to think about the cliff — the cliff, the fall, the landing.

Reality lurches into reverse.  Will closes his eyes and tumbles through a confusion of blackness, of cold, of pain.  Time stutters, then rights itself.  Salt spray lashes Will’s face.

Hannibal lies next to him on the jetty, still and pale in the darkness.  Hannibal isn’t moving, and when Will places a shaking hand on his chest, it doesn’t rise and fall.  It isn’t right.  This can’t be the way it ends: Hannibal hasn’t decided their ending yet, and it’s always Hannibal who decides, who’s one step ahead, constructing the future just as Will reconstructs the past.

This isn’t the way it ends: Will threads his fingers together on Hannibal’s breastbone.  He pushes too gently, then too hard, and he’s worried that he can feel bones cracking.  He’s struggling to maintain the rhythm, and he can’t remember how many of these he needs to do — is it twenty compressions or thirty? — before he tilts back Hannibal’s head and opens his airway.  Will presses his mouth to Hannibal’s and he tries to force the life back into him.  He blows again, harder, and his lungs heave in time with the memory, waking real, immediate pain in his broken ribs.  Will flinches back into the present.

"What instinct drives the fledgling out of the nest?" Hannibal asks.  "It plummets towards the ground, and it must spread its wings or die.  In that moment, it truly knows itself for the first time."  Hannibal studies him with boundless curiosity.  "Tell me Will, what did you discover in that moment?"

Will shakes his head, reluctant to describe it — to define and limit it — with words.  And, besides, Hannibal must know how it feels, that moment of becoming: black blood and all the world ablaze, the glow and the roar of it matching the fire in his veins.  Everything was beautiful, and that beauty was appalling.  Will wavered, afraid that he could never have this again, terrified that he would.  And then it was all too much, and the urge that had pushed him into the path of the Dragon pushed him over the edge.  He’d pushed them both over the edge, but Will is damned if he’ll feel guilty.  It was hardly the first violence between them, or the first betrayal.

"I discovered that I’d made a mistake."  And some mistakes are easier to fix than others.

Will wakes slowly, fighting free of his dreams, clawing upwards through layers of consciousness until his eyes open.  He lies tangled in the sodden sheets and waits for the hammering of his heart to subside.  The air is heavy with sweat and fear — of what, he’s not entirely sure, but it follows him from his bedroom, padding down the stairs behind him, clinging to him, burrowing inside.  He needs fresh air — but the air here isn't fresh, it’s soup.  Will misses the cold, clean silence of the north.

There's a stream that runs through their land.  It's small but fast-flowing and there are trout in there, trout that will be searching out the cool, shady spots now that the weather is heating up.  There’s a stream, but it runs close to the edge of their land, which means it’s close to the neighbours that he's trying to avoid — and, anyway, Will has no rods, no line, no lures, and walking into a tackle shop is a good way to set off all kinds of red flags.

So he closes his eyes and wades into the stream inside his head, the mellow sun and the gently curling mist.  His rod arcs through the air and the lure plops into the water, and he loses himself in the drone of insects.  The current is a cool pressure on the backs of his legs — a pressure that grows stronger, harder.  The water's rising, and panic sizzles deep in his lizard brain.  The stream is a torrent.  Surf crashes and breaks around his knees, and Will has to fight to keep his footing, while the dream fear rises inside him, tightening around his throat.  Then he’s back on solid ground, panting, his heart racing.  He stuffs his hands under his armpits to stop them shaking.

Will grapples with the coffee machine, and it’s only when he’s bolted down several scalding mouthfuls does he stop to think that maybe the caffeine won’t do much for his nerves.  He thumps the mug on the table, harder than he intended, and he sends an apologetic glance in Hannibal’s direction.  Hannibal is seemingly absorbed in his book, but his lips twitch in a faint smile.

"Teach us to care and not to care," Hannibal recites.  "Teach us to sit still."

But Will can’t sit still.  There’s a restlessness vibrating through him in spite of his tiredness.  It could be an illness, of course, some sort of infection, but his temperature is normal and his pulse is steady.  There’s a pressure building behind his eyes, but he doesn’t go for the aspirin bottle.  Whatever is wrong with him, he doubts that it’s physical.  It’s something in his head, something in his dreams, tectonic plates shifting in his subconscious: what he’s feeling are the aftershocks.

It’s entirely possible that Will’s just overthinking things; maybe he’s just not used to sharing his space.  Will doesn’t do domestic and he’s fairly certain that Hannibal doesn’t even know what domestic is.  It’s a miracle that they’ve made it this far without flaying each other, metaphorically or otherwise — although the fact that Hannibal still can’t walk may have something to do with that.  Will owes Hannibal now, owes him for throwing him off that cliff even after after Hannibal had — Will isn’t sure what, exactly.  Taken a bullet for him.  Laid down his life for someone who was more than a friend, someone he considered family.  

Will inspects the contents of the refrigerator.  "We need fresh food," he announces, "or we’re going to get scurvy."  It’s the truth, or part of it, and if Will needs to get out, needs some space, then this is a chance to kill two birds with one stone.

He examines his face in the mirror.  The scar looks worse now that when he first took out the stitches, but Will’s been through this before and he knows that things have to get worse before they get better.  The good news is that his beard is long enough — not to hide the scar, exactly, but to make it less obvious, at least.  Will’s photo must be all over the news, and while he hasn’t checked the FBI’s missing persons, he’s certain he must be right up there on the list.

Will times it so that he walks into the supermarket in the late afternoon.  It’s quiet enough that there aren’t too many potential witnesses; it’s busy enough that he doesn’t stand out.  No one gives him a second glance.  He shops quickly, sticking to the essentials, and gets in line, and all the time he keeps an eye on the other shoppers and the cashiers, alert for anyone watching him.  Everyone’s preoccupied, thinking about dinner, hurrying to get home to their families.  Will feels like an outsider, catching a glimpse of these ordinary people going about their ordinary lives, but there’s nothing new in that.  

There’s a nervous moment as he nears the front of the line, where TattleCrime sits on the magazine rack, waiting to ambush him.  He has no idea what to expect — it’s Hannibal who likes to wade through that particular garbage — but he has a strong suspicion that Freddie Lounds still hasn’t come up with any new material.  He moves closer and glances at the tabloid as casually as he can manage, and he just has time to register that it’s not his photo plastered all over the front page before he reaches the front of the line.  He makes just enough eye contact with the cashier, and he’s as polite and unhurried as he can be with his stomach churning.  Then it’s done, and he’s picking up his bags and heading towards the exit, out into the fresh air, and he’s safe.  The relief bubbles up inside him, an almost giddy high that stays with him as he gets in the car and pulls out of the parking lot.

"No truffles or Batard-Montrachet," Will smirks, as carries the shopping inside.  

"We must bear our disappointments as best we can."

Will figures that it was cabin fever, after all, that itch in the back of his brain, so he makes sure he doesn’t stay cooped up in the house.  He chops wood for the fire when his shoulder can stand it.  He tinkers with the car, opening the hood to check on the oil and the transmission fluid, and testing the pressure of the tires.  He goes to buy food, and he’s careful not to shop too close to home or to visit the same place twice.  He always takes the long way home, the quiet back roads where he’ll be able to see any headlights behind him, but there’s never anything there in his rear view mirror.  Will takes to walking after dinner.

Will steps outside and the night whirs and chirrups around him, as a thousand tiny creatures go through the rituals of life and death, stalking prey and luring a mate.  He walks as far as the edge of the woods and turns to look back the way he came.  He sees the lights burning, the house floating in the darkness, and just like that he’s back home, all those years and miles and deaths ago.  But this isn’t Wolf Trap, isn’t even Virginia, and this house isn’t some boat offering refuge from the waves.  He’s learnt how fragile the illusion of shelter is.  He’s experienced the hunger of the sea.

A dog barks, somewhere off in the trees, although the distance is difficult to gauge.  It’s closer than it ought to be, when the nearest house is a mile and a half away.  He has no idea where the owner is, and he really mustn’t let himself be seen, but the sound tugs at a tender spot somewhere in the region of his diaphragm, and he just can’t tear himself away.  There’s an explosion of movement in his peripheral vision, and he tenses, hands balling into fists — then he grins as a very enthusiastic spaniel bounds towards him.  After the proper introductions, the dog sits, tongue lolling and tail thumping the ground, and Will buries his fingers in the fur behind its ears — her ears: a pretty bitch with a golden coat.

He’s caught off guard, disarmed.  He pictures Winston and the others, left behind on the morning he set off to hunt the Dragon, left behind with Molly and Walter.  And if Wolf Trap was a long time ago Molly certainly isn’t, and he feels bad for not feeling bad enough.  He knows what she must be feeling, knows how she’s circling through her own personal hell of doubt, of fear, of hope, but it’s a dull pain, and nothing he can’t handle.  He supposes he’s known what would happen ever since he walked out of their house with Jack Crawford.  But the past seems to be haunting him this evening — or perhaps it’s the future.  He can’t be sure, only knows that there’s a tension, a restlessness inside him, like a burr in his brain.

Will brushes the hairs from his clothing before he heads back inside.  He doesn’t want Hannibal to know about the dog, doesn’t want him to find out that the owner has been walking on their property.  Will doesn’t want Hannibal to suggest that he pay them a visit.  The sticky weather seems to follow Will indoors, to follow him to his room, and he lies sweating beneath the sheets.  His mind is gently buzzing, jumping tracks, as restless as his body.  An image of Molly swims into focus, but he can’t quite see her face: she’s a ghost, a memory of softness and enveloping warmth.

He fidgets, half hard but hesitant — but maybe that’s all that’s wrong with him: maybe he’s just horny.  He slips a hand inside his shorts, and he stifles his moans as he works himself frantically.  Hot shame flushes through him as he comes, and a queasy guilt.  He shouldn’t be thinking of Molly, not when he’s living under Hannibal’s roof, when Hannibal is lying in the bedroom next to his, lying where Will placed him, because Will takes care of him now, in sickness and in health.  Will is conscious of a weight on his left ring finger.  He pulls gently and his wedding band slips free without a struggle.

The waves close over Will’s head and he sinks, falling in slow motion.  He plunges into darkness, but it’s luminous, like the night sky, and all the tiny bubbles escaping from his clothes and hair are sparkling points of light, galaxies in miniature.  They spin away from him through space, reaching escape velocity while he falls and falls, imploding under the pressure of the ocean’s icy grip.  His lungs burn and the blood roars through the chambers of his skull.  He can’t hold out much longer.  He can’t fight the urge, the need, to breathe.  He’ll open his mouth and it will all escape in a rush — his breath, his words, his memories — and all that will be left is the dark and the silence and the cold.

He wakes, drenched, the sour, familiar tang of fear in his mouth.  He swings his legs over the side of the bed, touching his feet to the floor but not yet ready to place one in front of the other and let them carry him forward into another day.  He shouldn’t really be surprised that he’s dreaming about this.  His life has had something of an epochal shift, after all.  It’s no longer simply a question of before Hannibal and after him: it’s before the fall and after — and it’s no thanks to him that there even is an after.

The nightmare reeks from every pore, and Will doesn’t want Hannibal to scent it on him like a disease.  Hannibal’s not the enemy, not any more, but it’s an old instinct, hiding his weaknesses.  He stumbles to the bathroom and turns the shower up hot, but the water on his flesh makes him shiver.  When he towels his hair it springs into wild curls and crowns his head like horns, but Will’s mind no longer bristles with antlers, and the stag has long since ceased to prowl his dreams.  Will is the most dangerous thing in this house now, and whatever is haunting his sleep it’s something new.

"Good morning, Will," Hannibal says, but Will can’t quite look him in the eye.  Hannibal is patient as Will takes him downstairs for breakfast.  Hannibal is always patient these days, and it’s starting to feel like an accusation.  Will tells himself it won’t do any good to rock the boat; he tells himself that it’s too late to worry about the formalities of forgiveness.  He curses himself for a coward.

The cold of the ocean seems to have leached into Will's bones.  It stays with him: a chill that he can't shift: an emptiness, an ache, a strange push-pull that he can’t explain.  It makes him want to run to Hannibal; it makes him want to run away, but it's a small house, and Will can't avoid the man forever.  If nothing else, they always sit together at the meal table.  Will needs to get out of the house.  He needs to get out of his head.  He needs.  Will remembers how the blood looked black in the moonlight, how Hannibal’s face, wild and exultant, was a perfect reflection of his own.

As Will opens the laptop, a part of him screams that he’s being reckless.  He mustn’t risk himself like this; he mustn’t risk Hannibal, not again.  He ought to wait and think things through.  But he remembers the moment when the whole universe hushed, when all the fear and the worry fell away, and there was nothing but the two of them and the kill.  Besides, it's not like he's entirely unprepared.  He's been following the local press, and a child-killer who got off on a technicality has been hogging the column inches.  It doesn’t take him long to find the man’s address.

Will pulls his car into a stand of trees about half a mile down the road, and goes the rest of the way on foot.  There's no vehicle in the drive, and he hopes the man hasn’t gone into hiding.  He hopes a lynch mob hasn't paid him a visit — although they will provide the obvious explanation for the man's sudden disappearance.  Will waits, and it's not unlike fishing: stepping into a space where time flows differently, where all that matters is studying the habitat, watching for the telltale signs of his prey, poised for sudden confrontation.  Dusk creeps in around him and he circles the house, but no lights appear in any of the windows.  Will moves closer, walking right up to the door, but there's no warning bark or teeth bared at him through the glass.

Headlights dazzle him, and he blinks the afterimage out of his retinas.  When they clear, the man is stepping inside the house, but he gives no greeting and receives none: he's alone.  The prospect of violence crackles up Will's spine and floods his brain with sharp anticipation.  A sense of absolute certainty lifts him, carrying him forward, and all his doubts and worries are a distant, fading memory.  He knows what he wants to do.  Will steps out of the shadows and knocks on the door.

The sound of Chopin welcomes him back home.  When he walks into the living room, Hannibal sees him, sees what he truly is, what he’s become.  Hannibal sees the parcel in his hands.  Will is buzzing — not happy, exactly, because the rush he feels is fiercer, less comfortable than that.  It skitters under his skin, but his hands are steady as he prepares the meat.  The cooking isn't up to Hannibal's standard, but he does his best and Hannibal knows how to appreciate a symbolic gesture: their first supper.  

Will places a forkful in his mouth and the taste bursts on his tongue, exhilaration fizzing through him.  For a moment, it's white hot, and it's all too much, too strange, but he breathes through it, and the intensity subsides.  He finds that Hannibal is watching him with simple, unfeigned pleasure, and a mellower warmth swells in Will's chest and blossoms into a smile.  He eats slowly, savouring the complex mix of flavours that he can't yet untangle.

"You were right," Will says.  "It does taste acidic.  Although he was angry as much as frightened."

"Did you need him to fight back?" Hannibal asks — and of course he’s noticed the ruptured mess of Will’s knuckles, the swelling of his jaw.  "Did it ease your conscience?"

"I didn’t need him to fight," Will says.  "I wanted it."  He provoked it: the moment when the man realised his danger, when every punch, every gouge, every kick became charged with that knowledge, with the sheer primal power of an animal at bay.  "He was never more full of life than in the moment he died, and I took that from him."

"I would have liked to see it," Hannibal tells him.

"I wish I could have left something worth seeing."  But there was already too much trace evidence, and Will’s best chance of not being linked to the crime was simply to hide the fact that a crime had taken place.

"How would you have marked the occasion?" Hannibal asks.

Will takes another bite of the meat and closes his eyes.  The image lights up, vivid and glorious: the flare of the match and the long second as it falls, and then the clothing catches and the flames rise, and the fat begins to hiss and sizzle.

"A pillar of fire," Will says.

"A burnt offering?" Hannibal enquires.  "I still don’t need a sacrifice."  He likes the idea all the same.

"An atonement for the past, then.  A transmutation: lies into truth."

"A transformation.  You no longer try to deny what you’re becoming."

"I feel like pieces of myself are absent," Will says, "but not missing.  I don’t miss them."  There’s a tender spot where the guilt ought to be — where it used to be — like the gap left by a tooth.  He can feel the absence, but not the pain of the loss.  "Perhaps I’m evolving, after all."

Will sleeps soundly and wakes gently.  He lies there listening to the slow rhythm of his heart, to the soft sigh of the air in and out of his lungs.  He rolls over, and suddenly his face is throbbing and his back hurts — and now his shoulder goes into spasm.  He does his best to stretch it out before he heads to the medicine cabinet.  He shakes a couple of aspirin into his palm, and then a third.

"You ought to get more exercise," Hannibal tells him.  "Perhaps you should carry more heavy objects into the woods and bury them."

"Your physiotherapy is as unorthodox as your psychiatry, Dr. Lecter."

"Then I will be be utterly conventional and recommend you apply some heat."  Hannibal is remarkably cheerful.

"Did he beg for his life?" Hannibal asks later, as Will stuffs his laundry into the washing machine.  "And did that enrage you further?"

While Will is beating the eggs for their breakfast, Hannibal says, "Did you feel a pleasurable anticipation before the kill?  And do you feel it now, when you think about the next one?"  

Hannibal is still relishing Will’s burnt offering, and he takes his time, dissecting it slice by slice.  But then, living vicariously is all he can do these days — and Will’s conscience stings at that.  Will feels no remorse for the meat in his stomach, or the violence with which he delivered it to the table.  That much is true, but the truth is rarely pure and never simple.  When he thinks of what he’d done to Hannibal, bile burns the back of his throat, and he swallows it down, to sit in his stomach, a weight that he carries with him through the day.

Hannibal is sketching by the window when Will walks into the living room.  "How do you see yourself now," Hannibal asks, "when you kill, and when you dream of killing?"

"For a long time I tried to give a name to the thing inside me, to give it a form.  I thought that if I could do that then then I could tame it."

"You tried on other faces, other becomings."

"Stags and dragons.  I twisted myself to fit inside skins that didn’t belong to me."  

"All you needed to do was grow into your own skin."

"When I look at my skin now," Will says, and he holds up one hand, forever black in the moonlight, "I see it covered in blood."

His own blood and the Dragon’s: one warm slick rush.  Hannibal’s smile was liquid as he accepted Will into the shelter of his arms and cradled him against his chest.  Before Will threw him off the cliff.  Before their first shattering collision.  Before Hannibal broke their fall.  And Will feels like he’s still falling, like he’s hitting the water so hard the air is knocked out of him, and his throat constricts around the guilt, the remorse, the piercing sensation of loss.  

"I can’t undo what’s done," Will chokes, and salt water stings his eyes.  "No matter how many times I imagine things happening differently, I can’t pull us back from that cliff."  

The cliff: Will’s most recent act of betrayal.  Add it to the list, along with the rejection, the stealthy blade, the snare of words he dangled to catch the Ripper — before he understood that Hannibal had a heart that could be broken, realisation coming too late, when Hannibal’s mask finally slipped, revealing pain that cut into Will as deeply as the knife.

"We both seem condemned to keep shattering teacups," Hannibal says.

Will blinks away his tears.  He forces himself to look at the other man, and a softer, gentler reality replaces the terrible fury in his memory.  The plea for absolution sticks in Will’s throat, but Hannibal’s always understood what it is that Will wants.

"If I chose to stand on the edge of a cliff with you," Hannibal tells him, "then I was prepared for whatever might follow."

Will looks for the signs of deception, a secret hurt, a lingering resentment, but all he sees is Hannibal’s smile.  He smiles back.  And maybe, Will thinks, just maybe it really can be as simple as that.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm way late to this fandom, but I only discovered Hannibal recently. (Come and say hi [on Tumblr](https://youweresoafraid.tumblr.com/).)
> 
> Hannibal has eaten my brain, and I just had to write something. This is the first fic I've written in years, though, so bear with me -- I'm a bit rusty!
> 
> Note: Hannibal quotes from T.S. Eliot's poem _Ash Wednesday_.
> 
>         Teach us to care and not to care  
>         Teach us to sit still.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's note: Content warnings are in the end notes, so I don't spoil anything.

Hannibal is able to walk again.  Will ought to be happy — he is happy, he really is — but there's a dizzying array of possibilities opening up in front of him, and his mind reels at the prospect.  He thinks of the money and the keys in Hannibal’s bag, and he can’t even begin to imagine what kind of future they might unlock.  It’s not that he wants things to stay this way forever, preserved in aspic, it’s just that he hasn’t really thought about what comes next — has deliberately not thought about it, if he’s honest with himself — and the prospect of change sends wild thoughts scrabbling through his head.  He doesn’t need to be a psychiatrist to work out where they came from: now that Hannibal can walk, he can walk away.  He can walk out on Will.

"Should we think about moving on?" Will asks, and there he goes again, using the word ‘we’ when he has no idea if Hannibal is thinking of the future in terms of the singular or plural.  

“When the time comes,” Hannibal replies, which is no answer at all.

He clearly doesn’t want to talk about it, either, which is fine with Will.  They’re sailing into uncharted waters, and he can sense the presence of unseen shoals waiting to shatter his hull.  The silence stretches out between them, stretches across days, pulling Will’s nerves as taut as catgut.  He starts to suspect that there’s something lurking beneath the surface of Hannibal’s silence.  A shudder perches between Will’s shoulder blades whenever Hannibal is out of his sight, and it’s more than just separation anxiety.

“I would like to draw you as Samson,” Hannibal tells him, and Will freezes, fingers tangled in his straggling curls.  “Rubens painted Samson asleep in Delilah’s lap while the Philistines cut his hair.”

“And who would play Delilah in this scenario?” Will retorts.  He already knows: he’s seen himself pursuing Bedelia across the pages of Hannibal’s portfolio.

“Samson prayed to God for the strength to kill his enemies,” Hannibal informs him, “even at the cost of his own life.  God may allow prayers for forgiveness to go unanswered, but he never denies a prayer for revenge.”

Revenge; forgiveness.  Will’s tired of the back and forth: the guttings, the shootings, the proxies and the collateral damage: who’s forgiven whom, and who is simply waiting for the chance to carve out their absolution with a knife.  And in that moment Will knows what Hannibal intends to do — except he doesn’t know, of course, he only fears.  And perhaps it was all too easy, too good to be true.  It’s not like Hannibal actually forgave him, and, besides, forgiveness does not necessarily preclude the need for retribution.  Hannibal forgives the way that Will himself forgives, the way that God forgives.

Now that Hannibal is back on his feet, he’s back in the kitchen.  It’s just like old times, and Will has to remind himself that that isn’t entirely a good thing.  He’s aware of his tendency to rewrite their history, to edit out the imminence of disaster, the undercurrent of fear that always gave an edge to the time he spent with Hannibal.  Now he watches Hannibal busy himself at the butcher’s block, and he sees the promise of violence in the set of Hannibal’s shoulders, a casual brutality in the way he slices flesh and hacks bone.  The human brain is a pattern recognition engine, and Will’s synapses spark, making connections, forming images, calling up memories — and Will is slipping in the wet red ruin of another kitchen, Hannibal looming over him with curved steel in his hand, as Will’s world is ripped apart.

Will finds himself walking the old tightrope, affection swaying him one way and fear the other, while, all the time, gravity tempts him to fall.  Still he can’t be sure what it is that Hannibal wants, what it is that Hannibal is planning.  He sees Hannibal with a unique clarity and depth of vision, but that vision comes with a blind spot, and there are times when he finds the man completely opaque.  So Will pushes ahead blindly, trying to convince Hannibal that nothing is wrong.  He tries to convince himself, too, but the tension tightens like a vice around his temples.  He drinks too much at dinner, which is the worst thing he should do when Hannibal is barely more than an arm’s length away with an array of sharp objects in front of him.  Will takes to carrying a knife.

There’s a piano in the corner of the living room.  It’s a baby grand, which is about Hannibal’s only concession to life on the run.  Will folds back the dust sheet, pulls out the stool and settles himself on the burnished leather.  He runs his fingers experimentally over the smooth, cold ivory and he hits a key.

“It’s out of tune,” he says.

“There was a piano in your home in Wolf Trap,” Hannibal observes.  “Do you play?”

“I’ve had lessons.”  Which they both know isn’t the same thing.  “I was told that I need to discover my own sound.  When I play, it’s imitation.”  Will is an excellent mimic, recreating the performance of others without even being aware of it.

“Echopraxia,” Hannibal murmurs, making Will flinch because Hannibal is there, right at his shoulder, and he’s not just quiet, he’s a ghost.  Will tenses with the expectation of an arm wrapping around his throat, pressing into his windpipe, unyielding as iron.  Hannibal is in Will’s space, dangerously close, and when he leans in and tries to coax music from the instrument, Will has a sudden, savage impulse to slam the piano lid down, cracking Hannibal’s fingers, breaking those murderous hands.  Then he shudders as the thought of Hannibal’s bones crunching sends unwanted memories rippling through him.  As the last discordant note fades into silence, Will eases the lid closed and pulls the dust sheet back into place.

Will wonders why Hannibal would postpone the fatal moment.  He wonders how Hannibal might choose to do it, and the multitude of possibilities pursue him into his dreams.  He’s washing the second-best china in the kitchen sink when he hears the hiss of a knife being freed from the block — and of course it had to be that, of course it had to be here: the place where Will first saw the real Hannibal Lecter, the place where the teacup endlessly shatters.

Will’s acutely aware of his own knife, a solid weight in his hip pocket.  It will take a second or two to pull it out, to let the blade spring free, and those are seconds he doesn’t have, because Hannibal is fast as well as strong.  And besides, if Will attacks first then he’ll never know for certain what Hannibal would have done.  So he holds himself in place, knuckles white where they grip the edge of the sink.  Entrapment: it’s not the first time he’s gone fishing with himself as bait.  He stands, his skin clammy at the thought of Hannibal behind him with a knife, and he knows that Hannibal will slit his throat, bleeding him quickly.  Hannibal will make sure that it’s humane.  Will stands, and he braces himself as best he can, and now the sweat is starting to prickle on his forehead.

Finally, there’s movement behind him, metal scraping on metal, and Will recognises the sound.  He turns to find Hannibal honing the edge of his filleting knife, the blade flashing up and down the sharpening steel.  Hannibal starts humming softly, and Will can’t quite pick out the tune, but he thinks it might be Mozart.  The adrenaline drains from him, and he sags with relief.  He wants to laugh, because there’s no danger here, no chokeholds or life-or-death struggles, just a man taking care of chores in his kitchen.  Just because Will has a blind spot doesn’t mean that there’s a monster lurking in that darkness.  Will dries his trembling hands and walks upstairs to his room, and he buries his knife in the bottom of his underwear drawer.

All that he wants now is for things to get back on an even keel.  Well, that and an end to his nightmares, and for once in his life he’d like his subconscious to give him a break.  Instead, it keeps on dragging him down: falling, drowning, cold salt water and a sense of loss, even though he wakes to the knowledge that Hannibal is here.  He’s still here.

“Do you lie awake in the dark,” Hannibal asks, as they face each other across the breakfast table, “and weep for your sins?”

Will’s bone-weary, and there’s nothing he can do to hide his pallor, the exhaustion bruised under his eyes.  "I haven't wept for much of anything, least of all what I've become."

He hasn’t wept, although sometimes, when he wakes from the nightmares, he feels the pressure of all those unshed tears like a dam waiting to burst.  So he starts his day with coffee and he rounds it off with wine, and he waits for his brain to stop putting him through the wringer.

“Tell me,” Hannibal asks, “how did you choose your victim?”

“He was all over the local newspapers.  It wasn’t difficult to track him down.”

“I know how you found him, Will.  I’m asking how you chose him.”

“He thought he’d got away with it,” Will says, relaxing his fists where they’ve clenched around his cutlery like a weapon.  “He killed that little boy, and he thought that no one could touch him.  It was only a matter of time before he’d have thought about doing it again.”

“If doing bad things to bad people makes you feel good,” Hannibal asks, “how do you think it would feel to do bad things to good people?”  Will thinks about that.  He thinks about it for a long time.

It’s still on his mind as he heads out to the log pile with an axe.  Chopping kindling is good exercise for his shoulder — the shoulder that the Dragon stabbed — and as metal bites into wood, Will remembers Hannibal swinging the hatchet, tearing into flesh, bringing the Dragon to his knees as they circled him: pack hunters; apex predators.  Teeth and steel.  Will surrendered to the darkness: embraced it, claimed it and let it claim him.  In that darkness he will never be alone again.

“I want to go hunting,” he blurts out.  Just thinking about it wakes a hunger in him, an almost physical craving, but he needs to be calm.  He needs to be precise.  “I want us to go hunting.  Together.”

Will looks into Hannibal’s eyes, waiting for the moment the energy that crackles through his nervous system jumps the gap between them, the moment when the dark fire catches and burns, and they’re both consumed.  But the eyes that meet his are shuttered: fireproof.

“Do you really think you’re ready?” Hannibal asks, and walks away.

Will abandoned everyone and everything, tore himself free of the chrysalis, raw and bloody, and it was all for them, all for this.  There’s no point to any of it if they’re not in this together.  He leaps after Hannibal and grabs him by the arm, whirling him round and slamming him against the wall — except he doesn’t, of course, just stands rigidly in place, biting his tongue before he can sound as desperate as he feels, biting hard enough that he tastes blood.  Of course Hannibal has a point.  Of course Hannibal is being sensible: he has a gift for survival, something that Will has always lacked.  So Will tells himself that he understands, but the pain of the rejection cuts sharper than a knife in the guts, burns colder than the Atlantic.

After dinner, Will walks to the edge of the woods, then turns and pushes on into the trees.  He only has a flashlight, but he’s done this enough times now that he knows where to duck beneath the low branches where to step around the exposed roots.  As he approaches the nearest point to their neighbour’s land, he hears a muffled barking, and he pictures himself running with the spaniel at his side, playing fetch; he imagines burying his fingers in soft fur.  The sound fades, until all that Will can hear is the rustle of leaves and the drone of crickets.  The absence leaves him strangely bereft, and he feels an emptiness beneath his hands.  He misses that particular kind of devotion — not unconditional, but certainly uncomplicated.  Food, shelter and attention: needs easily taken care of and spontaneously rewarded.  Will has has no idea what it is that Hannibal needs from him, what it is that he wants.

“In southern India,” Hannibal tells him, in a conversational tone, “fifty people went blind after staring at the sun.  They hoped to see a vision of the Virgin Mary.”

“Blind faith,” Will drawls, and Hannibal smiles at that, amused.

“Faith endures.  It persists in the face of objective reality.”

“We all have faith in something,” Will says, “or in someone.  It’s human nature.”

Hannibal isn’t smiling any more.  “Don’t stare into the sun too long,” he says.

There’s a conversation underneath their conversation.  It’s been going on for some time, but Will still doesn’t know what Hannibal is trying to tell him.  There are flashes of a pattern, a design, and Will could force them to make sense if he really tried, but his chest constricts at the thought.

He tells himself that it’s just a game: Hannibal is always playing, always working towards at least two different agendas.  Will just needs to bide his time while he figures out the rules of engagement, but Hannibal’s politeness is starting to set his teeth on edge — but that’s not right: it’s not politeness, because Hannibal is always polite, will continue to be courteous even when cutting open your skull.  It’s a distance, a detachment, and Will can’t remember a time when Hannibal didn’t find him the most fascinating thing in the room, not even when they were enemies.  Especially not when they were enemies, and maybe that’s it.  Maybe Hannibal only enjoys the thrill of the chase.  He can see Hannibal sitting at Mason Verger’s table, saying, “It’s dangerous to get exactly what you want”.  Will knows that Hannibal said it in an attempt to rattle his opponent.  He also knows that Hannibal is never more dangerous than when he’s speaking the truth.

“Happy birthday,” Hannibal says, catching Will by surprise.

He knows that it’s Tuesday, but he’s a little hazy about which exact Tuesday.  Besides, he’s never been much of a birthday person.  He spent the Big Four-O halfway across the Atlantic, trimming his sails as the wind gusted and veered, with just a bottle of bourbon for company.  He passed that milestone chasing after Hannibal, and here he is, three years later, still in pursuit of the same thing.  It occurs to Will that maybe, this time, Hannibal doesn’t want to be caught.  It’s a vertiginous thought, the prospect of separation, because whatever Will has become he’s bound more tightly to Hannibal than ever, a Gordian knot that he doesn’t know how to cut without severing something vital.

That evening, Hannibal spends longer than usual in the kitchen and the result can only be described as sumptuous.  Will has no doubt that Hannibal’s surpassed himself, but the food sticks in his throat, and for the first time since Hannibal starting cooking for him he doesn’t manage to clear his plate.  Hannibal is too polite to comment, of course, and tonight he’s playing the perfect host.  He talks, but he says nothing.  Hannibal is being witty, being charming, being everything that Will could want — but he’s not being himself.  He’s choosing not to be.

Hannibal pours what even Will can tell is an excellent vintage, although he hardly takes the time to savour it and he’s making inroads into a second bottle as they move onto dessert.  After dinner, he moves onto Hannibal’s whisky.  It’s a single malt, with a smoky richness that cries out to be savoured, but Will’s more interested in quantity than quality.  He drinks until the evening’s sharp edges start to blunt.  He drinks, and his body feels loose, adrift.  He drinks until his head begins to swim.  He feels reckless, full of dangerous possibilities, and his tongue is a feral thing barely caged by his teeth.  He heads back to the decanter.

“We’re becoming predictable,” Will informs him, unable to keep the sting of bitterness out of his voice.  They’re becoming dull, and of all the things that Will might have imagined about life with Hannibal Lecter — all the things he might have dreamed of, might have had nightmares about — it certainly wasn’t this.  “Life is maddeningly polite.”

He waits for the ready answer, for the inevitable deflection, because Hannibal won’t tell him what’s really going on, not this easily.  He waits, but for the first time since Will has known him, Hannibal is at a loss for words.  The floor lurches and tilts beneath Will’s feet, and he has to grab the back of a chair until the world rights itself.  Hannibal is mute, and he looks ill, looks wrong, looks unlike himself.  Panic rises hot and bitter in Will’s throat, but, over it all, an irresistible tide, rushes the urge to provoke Hannibal — into what, Will has no idea, just something decisive.  But Hannibal still isn’t talking, and his silence expands in the distance between them.

“Why don’t you hate me?” Will pants.

“Would that make this easier for you?” Hannibal asks.

The room spins around Will, and he wants to cling to Hannibal, to anchor himself — to hold them both in place — but his feet are right at the edge of the cliff and he’s teetering on the precipice.  He can feel Hannibal’s hands tightening his arms, can see the man’s lips moving, but all he can hear is the roar of static inside his head, waves crashing against the rocks.  There’s a weight crushing his rib cage, and his lungs are burning for lack of air.

“Why did you let me hurt you?” Will chokes, and he feels it again: the vertigo, and the precipice at his feet.

“I could ask you the same thing.”  Hannibal’s eyes are the colour of the sea, and Will feels like he’s drowning.

Will falls into bed and plunges into the water, into his nightmare.  The sea holds him like a fist, dragging him down.  He sinks, and the air is torn out of him to go hissing upwards, bubbles of light in the gloom.  Will sinks and Hannibal sinks with him, a victim of Will’s momentum and merciless physics.  They spiral deeper together, then they’re caught in the roll and tumble of the current, and no matter how tightly Will tries to hold on Hannibal is wrenched from his grasp.

Will’s lungs are screaming now, and his blood is boiling.  Sparks fizz and sting through his brain.  He feels the swelling pressure of his last agonised breath, and he stretches his hand towards Hannibal, reaching, clawing at the impossible gap between them.  He needs Hannibal to see him, needs him to know that he’s sorry, but Hannibal’s head hangs and his hair shrouds his face.  Then the sea drags them apart and Hannibal is swallowed by the darkness.

Will jolts awake in the grey pre-dawn.  He ignores the pounding in his head, the sickly lurch of his stomach, because he needs to see Hannibal.  But Hannibal’s not in his room.  Hannibal’s not in the kitchen, or the living room, the dining room, the bathroom.  He’s not outside on the porch, and Will wants to take off at a run, to check the garage, to scour the woods, but he isn’t crazy, and he isn’t going out there half-dressed and barefoot.  He has no idea where Hannibal might have gone, and he’s done enough stumbling blindly in the dark.  So he runs back to his room and fumbles into his clothes, and then he’s rushing down the stairs, two at a time.  He’s past the door to the living room and stamping his feet into shoes when he stops, and turns, and races back: Hannibal is sitting by the empty fireplace.

“We shall not cease from exploration,” Hannibal says, looking up from his book, “and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started.”

Will’s had enough of the quotations, the cryptic remarks and the lack of answers.  Hannibal Lecter carves his own bloody path through life, bursting the confines of mundane reality to haunt Will’s dreams, the dark centre of gravity who warps the fabric of Will’s existence.  The man in front of him now feels like a pale imitation, and Will itches to tear away the mask to get to the reality beneath.  He’s stopped by a certainty of disaster as powerful as it is obscure.  So he spends his days going through the motions, and at night he surrenders to the cold embrace of the ocean.  He feels like he’s losing time again, but he can’t quite bring himself to care.

Will’s hair grows into a dark thicket.  He looks wild, dangerous, so he takes a pair of scissors and he prunes his bangs.  For a moment he doesn’t recognise the man staring at him from the mirror.  Will throws the hair into the bin and starts to thin out the mass of curls.  He remembers the last time he tamed the unruly mass, one part of a carefully crafted image, a reflection that Hannibal was to see and recognise as his own.  He remembers before that, to his cell, where scissors were an unthinkable security risk: scissors, shoelaces, sheets to cover the stained mattress, even the most basic forms of privacy.  A reminiscent fear shudders through him: the helplessness of the caged animal, the rage he buried alive, growing and festering in the dark.

The scissors bite deeper, cutting close to his scalp.  His hand lifts again, and he’s chopping away another handful of hair.  He doesn’t know why he’s doing this — and he really ought to stop — but there’s a pressure swelling inside him, a pressure that builds in his sinuses and behind his eyes, a roaring in his ears, and he keeps on hacking.  Then the last clump of hair falls into the sink, and it’s done.  Will slumps forwards and presses his forehead to the cool glass, and the fever drains from him in one long, sighing breath.  He stares, with a kind of abstract curiosity, at the pale globe of his head.  Whatever Hannibal might say, he has as much in common with Delilah as he does with Samson: he’s been the betrayer as often as the betrayed.

At least, Will thinks, as he walks into the living room, he now has Hannibal’s attention.  But all he feels is discomfort, as Hannibal’s gaze crawls across his scalp.  He rubs a hand over the exposed contours of his skull, and his fingers catch on the ridge of scar tissue that mars his forehead, the place where Hannibal tried to open his mind.  If Hannibal were to peer inside his skull now, Will wonders whether he would be able to read it like a map, each convolution of his brain a turn in the road that brought him here.

“Have you considered the possibility that you would be better off without me?” Hannibal asks.

“Not sure I can survive separation,” Will tells him, wincing out a smile.  “We’re conjoined at the mind.”  He can make Hannibal realise that, if he only concentrates, but his thoughts are drowned out by the whine and hiss of his neurons.  The room whirls around him.  He falls.

He plunges into icy water and the darkness takes him, dragging him down — dragging them both down, Hannibal just beyond his clutching fingers.  Will’s lungs shriek imperatives, but he ignores them, stifles them and he stretches his hand towards towards Hannibal.  He’s burning through his air and everything is starting to go fuzzy, but still he reaches for Hannibal.  And Hannibal moves.  Hannibal’s arms rise, extending towards Will, pushed by the current that wafts his hair into a halo, that tilts his head up so that Will can finally see.  Blood vomits from Hannibal’s mouth.  Hannibal stares at him, eyes wide and sightless

“This isn’t sustainable,” Hannibal says.  The living room is filled with water and Hannibal's words bubble out of him.  Will flees to the kitchen.  

Hannibal is waiting for him by the refrigerator.  Before Will has chance to turn away, Hannibal's legs buckle beneath him and he's crumpling to the floor.  Will wraps his arms around him, holding him tight, dragging him to his feet, but Hannibal's a dead weight in his arms, pulling them back down.  Fear lends Will a desperate strength, and he hauls Hannibal up again.  But Hannibal keeps on falling, over and over, and no matter how Will tries to help him, to save him, he just can't stand.  This is all Will’s fault, although he can't say why.  There's a noose around his throat, and it's drawing ever tighter.

"Will," Hannibal begs — and Hannibal never begs.  Will lets him go.

Will runs, but getting away from Hannibal is never that simple.  Hannibal is always there, even when he isn’t, inside of Will’s head.  Will stumbles as wooden boards give way to soft loam.  He keeps running, careering through the trees, skidding on the wet ground as he tries to outrun what's inside him, the knowledge that swells insistently however hard he crushes it back down.

A dull impact, and Will staggers back, back from the man that he just slammed into, the man whose teeth are bared in a snarl as he spits out his words.  “— on my fucking property?”  Will just wants the man to back off, to leave him alone, but he's half a head taller than Will and he jostles into Will's space.  "You live round here, freak?"

Will can guess who the man is, can see the dog leash looped around one hand.  This is far too close to home, but eagerness roils under Will's skin even as he lifts his hands in a placatory gesture.  Maybe his intention isn't clear from his expression — or maybe it really, truly is — because the neighbour flushes with anger and the heels of his hands thump into Will's chest.  That's just rude, and Will's fist swings in a perfect, preordained arc, cracking into the man's jaw.

The neighbour stumbles back, and for a moment everything is calm.  Then the man launches forwards, and he’s throwing a punch of his own, but Will’s already moving and the blow only catches him on the ear.  He winces, thrown off balance, and the man lands a glancing blow to his solar plexus.  Will blinks away tears and wheezes in a torturous breath, then the endorphins and adrenaline flood through him, a rising tide sweeping away the pain.  He cracks an elbow into the neighbour’s ribs and the man lets out an animal grunt, holding one hand out in supplication.  Will breaks his nose, and he sees the blood squirt, sees the shock turn into fear and the fear give way to anger, and Will’s face splits into a grin.  His knuckles connect over and over, until they’re bruised and raw, but he doesn’t feel it, not yet, not while the rush is surging through him, fierce and glorious — but it’s not enough, just not quite enough to reach those dark corners where all his doubts, his fears, his anger, still seethe.

The man yells and charges at Will, catching him off guard, and they’re falling, except it’s Hannibal in his arms as they tumble together, and then they hit, shattering against the cliff face, and Hannibal goes limp beneath him.  They smash into the water, and Will’s adrift in a world of darkness and blood and the gleam of bubbles torn from drowning lungs.  The pulse is surging in his ears like surf pounding on rock, the remorseless sea eroding the bluff, undermining the foundations of the world.

Will peers through a red mist: there’s a fine spray of blood on his glasses, and great gouts of it on his hands and clothes.  He looks at the mangled wreck at his feet and his stomach starts to churn.  This isn’t the way it’s supposed to feel.  Will’s heart is hammering in painful double-time, but it’s pumping ice water through his veins.  Barking and a high-pitched whistle.  A woman’s voice — close, and getting closer — and Will doesn’t want to have to deal with her.  He doesn’t want to hurt the dog.  There’s no time to move the body, and no point in trying to hide it, not when there’s a spaniel sniffing for her owner, so Will does the only thing he can.

Hannibal is standing on the front porch, and Will is so absurdly grateful that he finds himself laughing, in spite of everything.  “I was furious with you, once,” Will pants.  “You tried to take away everything in my life that wasn’t you.”  Will understands it now, the urge to bind the two of them to each other, to cut away all other ties.  He clings to Hannibal, twining his fingers in his shirt, because he can’t — he won’t — let Hannibal go.  “We have to leave,” Will tells him, but that’s all right.  He’s ready, now, to burn his last remaining bridges.

“You have something in mind?” Hannibal asks, and Will nods, because he doesn’t even have to think about it.  He already knows the answer.

Bedelia doesn’t have Alana Bloom’s budget: she's relying on covering her tracks, not on hired muscle.  Once Will is inside her house, it's laughably easy.  Bedelia doesn't have time to turn, doesn't even see his face, before he has a forearm closing off her airway.  She fights dirty, stabbing her heel into his foot and clawing for his eyes, but Will just grins and squeezes harder.  Her straining muscles start to slacken; her legs kick spasmodically, sending a shoe clattering across the floor; she goes limp in his arms.  Will holds on a little longer, just to be sure.

Bedelia moans awake at the rattle of cutlery.  Her eyes flick and roll, and a strangled sob escapes her as she realises what's been done to her — and what is going to be done.  Will knows that noise, felt it swell inside his own throat in response to the scream of saw on bone, and he knows how the terror rises like the tide, then retreats, only to surge again stronger than before.  Will feels the snare of his empathy closing around him, feels sympathy start to tug at him, and he smothers them both.

"How are you enjoying life behind the veil?” Bedelia asks, rising magnificently to the occasion.

Her smile is a rictus grin, but she tilts up her chin and looks him square in the eye.  They might be taking her apart, but she isn't going to fall to pieces.  She has a vicious tongue, and she’ll use it right up to the end.  Apprehension shivers through Will, the nagging sensation that he's walking naked into battle.  But his fear goads the malice inside him, and it mingles with the smell of roasting meat and makes him salivate.  He’s ready for an appetizer.

"I wonder how you'll taste," he muses as he lays out the knives and forks with which they are going to devour her.

"Perhaps you should ask Hannibal," she retorts, with the curl of her lip that he remembers so well.  

"Are you trying to make me doubt myself?  Trying to make me doubt Hannibal?”  He’s not going to rise to the bait, not going to give her any ammunition — and there it is again, that feeling of unease.  It dawns on Will that he’s afraid of Bedelia, afraid that she’s going to discover his secrets, although he’s unclear what secret he’s trying to protect.

“Do you really think you’ll be the last of his brides?” she sneers.  “Good luck surviving the divorce.”

“That’s weak, Bedelia.”  Will wraps his arms around her, pulling her close to him, and he feels a delicious tremor that she can’t suppress.  “But I suppose you’re not the woman you once were.”  He carries her to her chair: the head of the table; the guest of honour; the main course.

"Bedelia has all the mercy of a shark that's caught the scent of blood," Hannibal warns when Will joins him in the kitchen.

"I'm not wounded," Will says, shying away from the suspicion that he's thrashing in the water while scarlet billows around him.  He picks up the steaming platter and carries it through to the dining room.

“Dinner is served,” Hannibal announces, but Bedelia changes her tactics, gazing straight ahead, giving them only her silence.  Will picks up the carving knife and her eyes follow it, drawn by the bright lure of the blade.  She winces as he cuts into her flesh.

"I hope you're hungry," Will says as he carves, placing slices of meat onto Bedelia’s plate, onto Hannibal’s and then his own.

Will skewers his first forkful and Bedelia watches with queasy fascination as he lifts it to his mouth.  Bedelia is startled into an honest reaction — and now, finally, he might be able to punch a hole through her armour, to land a decisive blow — but the look on her face isn’t terror, isn’t even disgust.  She’s not even looking in Will’s direction: she’s looking at Hannibal — no, not at Hannibal, but Hannibal’s plate, sitting there untouched.  Bedelia laughs.

"You survived the divorce, after all," she says.

Bedelia laughs again, and it’s genuine amusement, not a shield, not an act.  It’s wrong, and it shocks Will in a way that nothing else has since he broke into Bedelia’s house.  It has to be a reaction to the drugs he gave her.  Will glances at Hannibal, but Hannibal just stares right back, his face unreadable — and that’s not right, either.

“Next time you want to get Hannibal’s attention,” Bedelia says, “try a box of candy and a bunch of roses."

She’s not making any sense, and this evening isn’t going the way he planned.  Will shouldn’t have come here.  They shouldn’t have come here.

“There are none so blind as those who will not see."  Bedelia’s words are coming quicker, now, driven by a new energy.  Will knows what that means, knows that feeling from the inside: the moment of revelation, the certainty of knowing.  “But that’s not your problem, is it?  You don’t see too little, you see too much.  You’re seeing things that are no longer there.”

Will looks at Hannibal, because Hannibal will stop this madness, will make Bedelia see.  But Hannibal just looks at him, immobile, inert.

“This isn’t just survivor’s guilt,” Bedelia says.  “You feel responsible.  No, it’s more than that.  You are responsible.”  She’s relentless once she senses vulnerability.  There’s blood in the water, and it isn’t hers, it’s Will’s.  "You killed him."

“Shut up,” Will croaks, despising the weakness in his voice, the weakness that he knows Bedelia will take infinite pleasure in crushing.  “Hannibal,” he pleads, as though Hannibal could make this better.  As though Hannibal could do anything at all.

Will looks at Hannibal and sees him, truly sees him: hair clotted with blood, eyes open and unseeing, salt water gushing from his mouth as Will pounds and pounds at his chest.  And Hannibal doesn’t move.  He’ll never move again.  Will can’t bear the thought of other hands touching Hannibal, the thought of gloves and scalpels, samples and tests.  So he lets the ocean take Hannibal, lets it drag him down, tearing him away — away from Will.  And then he’s gone.

“You just couldn’t bear to let him go.”  Bedelia is staring at him with horrible, triumphant understanding.

She’s right.  Will couldn’t let him go; he hasn’t.  He won’t.  But his world freezes, and fractures, and the truth rips through him with such sharp intensity that it’s beyond pain.  That will come later, the pain and the guilt, and he has no doubt that a reckoning is due.  But for now, Will gives way to his rage, lets it fill him up until there’s no more room to feel or to think.  And in that moment he believes in Hannibal’s god of cruelty, because he surely created Will Graham in his image.

“Can’t live with him,” Bedelia says, unable to stop herself hurling one last barb.  “You’ll have to live without him.”

And that, Will thinks, as his hand closes around the carving knife, is just rude.  
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: major character death.
> 
> Liked the story? [Share it on Tumblr.](https://youweresoafraid.tumblr.com/post/161823084724/cicatrix-noncanonical-hannibal-tv-archive)
> 
> Note: Hannibal quotes from T.S. Eliot's poem _Little Gidding_.
> 
>         We shall not cease from exploration  
>         And the end of our exploring  
>         Will be to arrive where we started  
>         And know the place for the first time
> 
> He paraphrases the following line from Walt Whitman’s poem _The Beasts_ : ‘They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins’.
> 
> Why yes, I am addicted to pretentious poetry, thanks for asking. ;)


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